ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a reconsideration of the role of late Qing transnational encounters is needed in order to understand broader social changes in twentieth-century China. One such transition, the erosion of the traditional Confucian family and the growth of the nuclear family, is generally ascribed to indigenous intellectual and political developments. However, the lives of abandoned baby girls raised by German Protestant missionaries at the foundling home Findelhaus Bethesda in Hong Kong from the early 1850s to 1919 expose other forces at work. They highlight the crucial role played by what Henri Lefebvre terms transformative spaces. The parallels between the lives of the missionary-reared foundlings and unusual women in southern Guangdong shed light on not just familial change, but also processes enabling the emergence of new roles for women in Republican China.
